Hanging by a Slender Thread
by NeedsmoarDelta
Summary: When Heidi finds herself in Hell, Kenny puts his immortality on the line to help her unravel the mysterious circumstances behind her death. But apperances can be deceiving and Kenny uncovers more than he bargained for. Penname changed from Lunagrrl180.
1. Prologue: Welcome to Hell

_A/N: This fic was inspired by the speeches of a Puritan preacher by the name of Jonathan Edwards, who mainly spoke of __Hell.__ I read one of his sermons and thought of Kenny. Please let me know what you think, con crit is greatly appreciated! This is a prologue to what will become a multi chaptered fic and the quote below come straight from one of Jonathan Edward's sermons. _

"_O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in:__ it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit..."_

"Goddamnit, Kenny, get the hell up!"

I wake with a start, wiping the sleep out of my eyes and hopping out of bed. I blink; everything is blurry and out of focus. After several of minutes of scanning my room covered in dirty socks, old porn mags and scattered Cheesy Poofs, I find what I'm looking for: my old orange parka. It's a bit of struggle to get into, and I hear a couple of seams ripping.

"Fuck," I mutter under my breath.

I had gotten this parka when I was twelve and I was expected to keep it until I graduated high school. Sticking a pack of cinnamon gum in my pocket, I head past the living room and grab my share of frozen waffle before slamming the door behind me.

I vaguely hear my Dad's half sober slurring, "Damn it, Kenny, don't slam the door for fucks sake!"

Chewing thoughtfully, I cross the railway tracks and walk past Stan's house, towards the high school. Reaching the intersection of Main and High Street, I jaywalk just like I always do, towards the familiar brick building with the crappy, tarnished sign reading, "South Park High School: An institution for higher learning". I roll my eyes, higher institution of learning my ass.

I hear Wendy's high pitched voice shriek, "Kenny! Watch out!"

Pain hits, white hot, and then everything is black.

* * *

I force my eyes open, staggering to my feet. Being sucked into a vortex of hell is never a fun trip. 

"Excuse me?"

Steve, the hell director says softly into the megaphone, "May I have your attention please? Okay,so this is hell…"

I turn away, already bored. After all the times I have been here, this speech gets old before it's even begun. Out of the corner of my eye I spy familiar light brown tresses so shiny that they could've only belonged to one person: Heidi Turner, infamous for the amount of hair products she goes through in the span of a month.

"Heidi?" I ask and she whips her head around so fast I swear her hair became aerodynamic for a moment.

"Kenny?"

Her pretty features are contorted into a mask of fear, panic and pain.

She looks at me with hazel eyes filled with tears, "Where are we?"

I walk towards her and in one smooth motion place my arm around her shoulders, holding her close. "Welcome to Hell, sweetheart".


	2. Chapter 1: Tofu Brownies

_A/N: Forgot to mention __this in the prologue, but the boys (and Heidi) are__ sophomores in high school. Every chapter is going to have a new Jonathan Edwards quote._

_"As he that __walks in slippery places is__ every moment liable to fall"__- Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God_

_Disclaimer: Not mine. __Ever._

To say that Heidi was horrified would have been the understatement of the century. Pushing me away, she paced, trying to comprehend what had just happened.

"No...Not possible," she murmured, lost in her thoughts.

I sit the edge of a crater; one of many littering the desolate landscape.

"No…this is impossible. I must be insane, there is no way I can be-" Heidi's voice grew louder and shriller with each word; she looked to be at the brink of hysteria.

"Dead," I say nonchalantly, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of my back pocket and lighting one.

With a shriek that could rival Medusa's, she launches herself at me, clawing at my face and hair.

"Whoa, calm down ho."

Shit. This was probably the worst time to have a Cartman moment. Although I could never think of a good time to have a Cartman moment.

"Don't- talk- to- me- like- that- you- fucking- son- of- a- bitch!"

Each word was accompanied with a stinging slap to my face. I touch a hand to my cheeks; the skin is raw and tingling slightly. I look her straight in the eyes, her lower lip quivers dangerously.

Jesus Christ, if there is one thing I hate it's when girls cry. It feels like I'm intruding on something hidden, a private moment that I shouldn't be involved in. I find myself incapable of saying no to a crying girl; something that my ex Bebe had discovered and had milked for all it was worth before I dumped her on her skinny ass.

Sure enough, she bursts into tears, burying her face in my shoulder. I stroke her hair and whisper soothing scraps of comfort into her ear. This method appeared to be unsuccessful as her sobs grew in volume and I can feel snot trickling down my neck.

Trying not to flinch, I take Heidi's swollen, tearstained face in my hands, "Look, I'll figure out a way to make this better, I promise."

"Promise?"

Heidi seems to become a little of girl of eight again, the same hopefulness in her voice that very young children possess.

"Come on," I say, pulling her up and heading towards Satan's loft in the middle of Dante, Hell's only city.

* * *

"Hi Kenny! Come on in; I just finished baking a batch of tofu brownies."

Chris holds a pan of what can only be described as mush, with a sickly green tinge.

I roll my eyes; there was no way I was getting within five feet of his tasteless, overcooked healthy crap. Chris had been Satan's on again, off again boyfriend since the fourth grade. From the looks of it, they were very much on again.

"Uh, no thanks, I'm allergic to brownies."

Heidi raises an eyebrow and says, absolutely deadpan, "I'll have one, please."

Chris' face brightens and he makes a show of getting dinnerware and napkins. Heidi takes a bite and shallows, wincing a little as it went down.

"What do you think?"

Heidi has turned the same sickly shade of green as the brownies, clapping her hand over her mouth, she runs down the hallway.

"It's the first door on your left," I offer.

"She seems like a nice young lady; she's your girlfriend?"

"Nah," I shake my head no.

Chris looks disbelieving, "Make sure to practice safe sex, Kenny."

Oh God, if there ever was time to bang my head against the wall, it would be now.

"Uh, thanks for the tip," I mumble. "Is Satan around?"

"Yes, of course. Honey!" Chris calls and Satan lumbers down the tiny hallway, looking pissed off, to say the least.

"What, Chris?"

"Look who came to see you!"

"Oh, hey Kenny, what's going on?"

"Look, I need your help. There's this girl-" At this, Chris gives me an 'I knew you were fucking her' look. "Anyway, she died and she's really upset; I don't know what I can do to make it better."

"Kenny, I just can't bring people back to life, she's dead; she's going to have to accept that and move on."

"But I don't think she was meant to die-"

Satan pulls me off to one side and Chris wanders into the kitchen, humming the theme song to Three's Company.

"What's with the secrecy?" I ask

"Chris and I have been going through a rough patch lately."

I roll my eyes. It seems like every few weeks the two of them were "going through a rough patch".

Heidi wanders in, her face is pale, but at least it isn't green anymore.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I just died, found out I'm destined to live in hell for all eternity and spent twenty minutes puking my guts out. I'm super, thanks for asking."

"That brings me to my next point," Satan lowers his voice to a whisper, "I'm bored. Maybe I will allow you to help this girl, but on one condition: If you find out the cause of her death, I will resurrect her. If you don't, you will lose your immortality."

"Wow, indecisive much?" I quip.

"Fine." He pouts, "I don't have to do this, you know."

"I'll do it." I motion Heidi over and she obliges, leaning on my slightly. This was so surreal. I had never really known Heidi that well; she had been Kyle's girlfriend for over a year but besides that she had just been another girl, hanging in the background. Now I was going to put my own immortality on the line to help her? Strange the way things turn out sometimes.

"What's going on?" she asks, wrinkling her cute button nose in confusion.

"Kenny here," Satan motion towards me, "Is going to find out why you died. If he figures it out within a week, you'll be brought back to life."

Heidi brightens, looking like a puppy waiting for food at the dinner table.

"But if he fails, both of you will be doomed to eternity in the Underworld!"

Satan's voice becomes theatrical and over dramatic; I roll my eyes. He pulls a contract out of thin air and hands me a quill pen to sign, in red ink that looks suspiciously like blood. Heidi appears quite worried, she whispers in my ear, "Are you sure?" I nod; and sign.

My name, Kenny McCormick, is iridescent, with a pearly luster that quickly fades as the "ink" dries. Almost immediately afterward, I feel myself begin to disappear, leaving Heidi behind. I hope she can survive Chris' cooking.


	3. Sleuthing like the Hardly Boys

_A/N: Yeah, I know you all are mentally yelling at me for posting such a short chapter. Trust me; the next one will be longer. This one originally was, but it didn't seem to work, so I'm splitting it into two. _

The feeling of snow melting down the back of a parka is never a good one. Seriously. In fact, I'd recommend avoiding such situations. But, of course, when you are thrust from the bowels of Hell (literally) that type of thing seems to happen.

"Fuck," I mutter, brushing off the fresh snow that had accumulated during the night. I sit up, blinking slowly, taking in my surroundings. I was at the bus stop. Again. I swear that seems to be the only portal from Hell and back in this hick town. They should consider building another one, preferably indoors.

Now that I'm back, I have no idea where to start. Break into her house? Interrogate Kyle? Fuck if I knew. The logical answer seemed to be school, but this is South Park, where logic is not used at the best of times, let alone the worst of times. If my head told me it would be best to go to school, that would be a good reason to go to church. Screw it; I might as well go to school. Maybe for once there will be a reasonable answer for all this - although it's looking less and less likely.

------

After a highly nutritious breakfast of coffee and cigarettes, I push open the rusting metal front doors of South Park High, the hinges shrieking at an inhumane pitch. I cringe, but manage to get through the hallways undetected, slipping into the back row of English class.

"And what do you think Hawthorne intended to symbolize with the motif of the scarlet letter?"

"That it was that ugly skank's time of the month?" Cartman leans back in his seat, a smirk on his piggish face.

Wendy rolls her eyes, "That's an incredibly sexist thing to say."

"Whatever, hippie."

Wendy opens her mouth to say something, but the bell rings, cutting her off.

Overexcited fifteen year olds push each other out of the way, trying to get to their lockers, the bathroom, janitor's closets or the back courtyard. Only Kyle remains, putting away his notebook and pens with excruciating slowness. His ushanka is pulled down over his eyes, his shoulders hunched. I take a step closer, leaning slightly to the right in order to get a close up of his face. Tears run silently down his cheeks, he bites his lower lip in a futile attempt to stop the flow.

Something about him, in so much pain and so alone, makes my chest ache. I wish there was something, anything, I could do to help but I know there is nothing I can say to make his pain go away. So I slip away, deep in thought. I was going to have to make like the Hardly boys and go sleuthing.

--------

It was easier getting her locker combination than I thought it was going to be. That office chick sure is sexually repressed.

"25-17-81," I mutter under my breath, turning the lock right and left. With a click it opens, and I'm overwhelmed with the musky scent of girlish perfume. Or possibly incense. Either way, it smelled kind of….. sexy. A mirror hangs on the back wall; on the door various pictures of Heidi, Kyle and her friends stuck together with heart shaped magnets. I sort through a messy pile of schoolbooks, looking for anything that could possibly help me. I come across a spare tampon, with a shudder I chuck it in the trash. Bad memories never really die.

A plain black composition book is shoved to one side; I pick it up and flip through the pages. It was filled with neat cursive handwriting, intermingling with random doodles of people and…I squint, looking closer. Was that a pot leaf?

I shrug my shoulders and slam the door shut. Time to catch up on my reading.


End file.
